They Don't Know
by Tree of Angels
Summary: Naruto's mask is breaking. Will he cling to it to the very end or finally let someone in? Hint of GaaHina. Now a two-shot!
1. Chapter 1

They never knew. They were so blind to the truth. As Naruto perched on top of the smooth head of the hokage statues, he looked down upon his village. If any of his teammates were to see him now, they wouldn't recognize him. Gone was the wide, head splitting grin. Gone was the blaring orange jumpsuit. Gone was the mask erected for his protection.

The grey cloak that flapped around him was more than just protection from the wind, it was one of the few things left for him from his parents. He wasn't sure whether to hate his parents or love them. How could he decide if he had never met them? They had loved him, or so Obaachan always said, but they had also made his life a living hell. He didn't regret it though. He wouldn't go back in time and change anything. It was obvious to him that if he had not been raised how he had been raised, if he had never been neglected, he would be a completely different person and who was to say that the person now was not better than the person he could have been had he had parents to look out for him. He was just weary. His shoulders slumped forward as the exhaustion crashed down on him. It was so hard to keep his emotions reigned in and to construct a persona with limitless energy. He was so tired, but he knew he could never let the mask go. It was as much a part of him as the person behind it was. He leaned forward and concentrated on the training grounds in the distance. He saw two figures there, sparring. He couldn't tell who it was. He wanted to get a closer look but that would mean revealing his presence to anybody who happened to be looking his way. Strangely enough, it was easier to move around in his mask than if he were himself. He caught a glimpse of pink. He strained his eyesight further. It must be Sakura. He caught another glimpse of color. Was she fighting with Ino? Somehow he wasn't surprised.

There was slight movement behind him. Naruto knew who it was before he spoke. He was the only one who knew about the front he put on for the village. "Naruto?"

He glanced back briefly, caught a glimpse of red before he leaned back and stared at the underside of Tsunade's chin. "What's up Gaara?" he said, grinning so widely it hurt his cheeks.

Gaara's kohl lined eyes glared at him. "Don't do that," he growled.

Naruto sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, dispelling the trademark dobe grin. "I'm tired," he murmured underneath his hands. He let out a long sigh. "How about a mission, eh, Gaara? Make up some bullshit to Obaachan about needing me for a solo mission in the Sand. By the time I come back, I'll be good as new. What'd you say--"

"No," came the cold answer.

Naruto's eyes grew round in surprise and he sat up, letting his hands drop to his knees. "Why not?" he demanded, glaring accusingly at his friend. When Gaara started to speak, Naruto already knew the answer. "Nahah. Don't start that shit up again." He shot up to his feet, carefully keeping away from the edge so no one could see him. "I am not telling anybody! The only reason you know is because you are...well you. You can't force me to do this."

Gaara stood impassive, with his strong arms crossed against his chest. His eyes, however, were not the usual icy emotionless orbs. They were filled with anger and concern. Naruto wanted to scoff at him. Concern! Who should be concerned for who? "You know my views on this, Naruto." Naruto paced irritably back and forth, stopping every once in a while to glare. "Your mask is breaking, isn't it?" Naruto just shot him another glare. "You're tired. I can tell. The human mind isn't meant for that type of stress."

"And what do you want me to do?" Naruto hissed. "Just prance in there, call a meeting and tell them all they don't really know me and I've been lying to them for years? No, I don't think so." He looked over at Gaara to find that he was looking at him like that was exactly what he expected him to do. He let out a harsh laugh and stared down at the oblivious villagers meandering around in the streets below.

"Naruto, I talked to Tsunade-sama. She's worried about you." Gaara told him before muttering something while looking at the ground.

Naruto frowned. "What was that last part?"

Gaara glared at him. Then he straightened his shoulders like he was preparing for battle. "I'm worried...too," he said, losing energy by the second word. Naruto grinned, his smile smaller but no less radiant than his alter ego's.

"Awwww, Gaara loves me. What will Hinata say?" Gaara's face turned blood red as he glared at his friend. Naruto let out a short laugh before calming down again. "That was too much of a good opportunity to miss." When he looked back at Gaara, he was completely sober once more, his anger having left as fast as it had come. "I'm sorry, Gaara, for having worried you. Don't. I'll be fine."

"Naruto..." Gaara growled.

Naruto let out another sigh. "Fine. Just...give me some time alright. It's not going to be easy." Gaara nodded and left his best friend to his own thoughts.

And it wasn't easy, not by a long shot. It took a month for him to gather enough courage to confront Tsunade. He made the decision while eating ramen. Before he could change his mind, he had thrown down some money on the table and left, his ramen left half finished at the table. The cook had watched him leave with a worried stare. He raced up the stairs to the Hokage's office. At the door, he hesitated. He stared at the wood for a whole minute before pacing in front restlessly. Who would have known that Naruto could ever lose his nerve? He was out there for some two minutes before something crashed against the door from the other side. Tsunade's gigantic voice filtered through the door. "Whoever is out there, get in here or get out before I punch your brains out!"

Rubbing at his neck sheepishly, he entered and closed the door behind him. "What took you so long, gaki?" Tsunade asked. When she noted the absence of a smile, she got worried. "Naruto?" When he didn't respond she sighed. She took out a bottle of sake from her desk, as if in preparation and enabled the secrecy wards. "Sit down and speak." When he didn't move, she took a huge gulp of alcohol and warned, "That was an order, shinobi. Sit."

Naruto's face paled considerably, but he sat down. He looked at the sake bottle and then at Tsunade. "May I?" Tsunade frowned but nodded. He snatched the bottle and drank at least half of it. When he handed it back to the Hokage, he grimaced. "That tastes awful."

"Then why did you drink it?"

"I think I thought it would give me more confidence. Guess not." He let out another sigh and looked out the window. "I don't know where to start..." he murmured.

Tsunade handed him back the bottle and he took another swig. "How about at the beginning."

Naruto nodded. "When I was six...no that's too far ahead. When I was really young, I had to live out on the street. Ojii-san found out when I was..." His voice trailed off. Tsunade was leaning back in her chair with an uncharacteristic contemplative look on her face. It looked strange mixing in with the almost invisible signs of worry.

Naruto stood up abruptly, his chair almost toppling over before he caught it and shoved it to the side. "You know what!" Naruto suddenly fumed. "It doesn't matter what happened before, does it? What matters is what happens now, right?" He paced angrily across the floor, going from one side of the room to the other, his balled hands stuffed in his pockets and his gaze fixed on an invisible point in the middle of the room. As the Hokage watched her dearest ninja work himself up, she was sorely tempted to drown herself in her precious sake. Only her growing concern stopped her.

"Naruto..." At the sound of his name, Naruto whipped around to look over at Tsunade. Her expression was convulsing between irritation and worry. As suddenly as his anger had appeared, it disappeared. A deep throated laugh burst forth that permeated the room, a laugh that did not belong to her Naruto...unless...Her blue eyes widened as she stared at her pupil.

Naruto finally sat down again, tears running from his eyes from all the laughter. Then suddenly the laughter was gone and all that was left was the tears. He buried his head in his hands, his shoulders heaving as the slow trickle of tears turned into a flood. Tsunade could only look at the sobbing bundle in distress and more than a little shock. In the time that she had known Naruto, she had never seen him cry, not like this. Tsunade slowly stood up and, skirting around the boy as she would a wild animal, she went over to the door and locked it. The click as the door closed was oddly reassuring. The moment she put the key down on her desk, she let out a heavy sigh and approached the distraught shinobi. When she kneeled in front of him, he looked up briefly, his face red and sopping wet. It was enough for her to remember how it was to be someone other than the Hokage.

Still kneeling, she brought her surrogate son into her arms. And it was enough.

**AN: Review!!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: The long-anticipated second chapter! Hope you like it!**

Sometimes Naruto forgot about the mask. He forgot that another him, a truer him, existed. He would do pranks, miss the targets and goof around even in the middle of battle. But when he came home, his little not-so-safe-sanctuary, he would feel exhausted and drained. And the mask would crumble and suddenly things weren't as simple. He was so tired of being underestimated. He was tired of pulling punches. He was tired of the array of unnecessary wounds he gathered throughout the day that he was sure he could have avoided.

Tsunade knew about the mask, of course. Being in her presence was a relatively new experience. She and Gaara were the only ones who knew.

Sometimes he fumbled. Sadly, he knew more about how to act like his persona than how to act like himself. Sometimes he caught himself lying without meaning to and then he would have to correct himself because he had promised Obaachan that he would no longer lie to her. The first time he had done it, stumbled like that, she had been surprised and had looked at him with dawning horror as she finally realized how hard it was for him to just be himself. Sometimes he didn't know how. After that first time, though, he noticed she started steering the conversations so that she could learn more about him and so that he could too.

A month had passed since Naruto had confronted Tsunade and told her (more like broke down in front of her and she figured it out). At first his solo meetings with her were enough and Gaara had seemed appeased if not totally happy. But soon he realized that the brief respites with Obaachan just made things worse. He started to want to say things to his friends that he had never wanted to before. He started feeling more tired than ever because he knew what it could be like, for them to actually know him. He craved companionship and friendship based on truth. But Uzumaki Naruto was scared. He was terrified that the moment he told his friends, they would no longer be his friends anymore.

That was the state of things when Obaachan called him to her office one morning. He had been walking down the streets of Konoha, headed home with book tucked under one arm. He had stolen it from the library; his mask would never have known where the library was. The true Naruto found consolation in books, a peace he had never known before. It was a book that had first given him the idea of using a persona as protection. He loved books so much that he knew that fake-Naruto never could; in the presence of books, he found it much harder to pretend.

Naruto had been walking a little faster, excited to get home and start reading. He hadn't read a book in too long. Whistling softly he was only a block away when an ANBU jumped down in front of him. The mask slid on automatically even as he discreetly pushed his book deeper under his arm. "ANBU-san!" he yelled obnoxiously. "Does Obaachan need the Great Uzumaki Naruto-sama?" He could almost see the poor ANBU flinch at his volume. The ANBU nodded solemnly. Naruto pumped his fist. "Yes!" and he sprinted toward the Hokage tower, jumping from roof to roof with not entirely fake excitement.

He tumbled through the window of the high tower directly into the Hokage office. Rolling from head to toe he ended up sprawled across a wooden surface, staring upside down at Tsunade. At the moment she was glaring at him, her arms crossed, her eyebrows furrowed and her foot tapping an impatient beat on the floor. As he had landed on her desk and scattered all her papers to the floor, he could understand her vexation. He groaned. "Sorry," he muttered, sheepishly. Her face softened slightly, although that wasn't saying much. He tried to sit up without messing up any more papers, only slightly successful.

As he sat up, he finally realized that Sakura was also in the room, glaring at him, looking uncannily like her teacher. He swallowed dryly. She was turning red. Naruto was already moving his hands up to block his ears. "NARUTO! Baka!" Unfortunately blocking his ears did nothing to stop her fist from connecting with his stomach. He crashed into the wall, knocking down a bookcase, making more of a mess than his unsuccessful landing on the Hokage's desk.

"Sakuraaaaaa!" he whined, rubbing his stomach.

Sakura huffed. "Baka!" she said for good measure. "Are you a shinobi or not?"

"Sakuraaaaaaa! Don't say thaaaaaaat!" he complained.

"Naruto," Tsunade interrupted. Naruto's stomach suddenly felt full of lead. With a sinking feeling, Naruto turned around to look at his leader. "Stop."

"Tsunade-sama?" Naruto asked, hoping that she hadn't meant more then the habitual arguments between him and his teammate.

Her eyes were unforgiving, if a little sad. Her expression was hard, not the face of an obaachan. "I need you, not him." At his terrified expression, she stood up, arms still crossed under her chest. "Now."

Taking a deep breath and staring at the floor, Naruto composed his expression. "Hai, Hokage-sama."

He raised his head up in time to see Tsunade nod. "Good. Take off that ridiculous jumpsuit. I can't talk to you with that on."

Naruto spared Sakura a glance. She was gaping, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. He looked back at Tsunade. It was true that he felt more like himself when he took off the orange eyesore. He never wore it during his meetings with Tsunade as he always had dark clothes underneath. But he had never taken off the jumpsuit in front of anyone except Tsunade and Gaara. It was like revealing himself to them; it made him vulnerable; there was no mask there with it off.

"Hai." He swallowed nervously and unzipped the hideous garment, trying not to watch Sakura from the corner of his eye. He looked back at Tsunade as he finally slipped out of the jumpsuit and folded it. Her eyes were still so sad, but they were determined. It was like she was telling him 'this is for you.' He took another deep breath and forced himself to relax and stand tall. This was who he was. Obaachan was right; he needed to do this. There was nothing to be ashamed of. He placed the orange bundle on the corner of the Hokage's desk and started cleaning up the papers he had strewn around, giving Sakura time to compose herself.

By the time he was finished, she looked a little better, but she was still staring at him. "Naruto?" Her voice sounded small and confused and a little hurt. He looked at her, waiting for her to say something. She didn't.

Naruto turned back to Tsunade. "Do we have a mission, Tsunade-sama?"

Tsunade nodded. She ruffled through the mess of papers on her desk until she found what she was looking for. "There are two missing nin prowling near the border. I suspect that they've been hired for something. I want you to find them."

* * *

When they got out of the Hokage office, they had spent more than an hour going over the details of their mission and night had already situated itself in the sky. As the meeting had progressed, Sakura's expression had become more and more bewildered and her glances toward her teammate had become more and more frequent until she might as well have been staring at him non-stop. As they finally got out of sight of their leader, Naruto became tense, waiting for the inevitable blow up. He didn't have to wait long.

Sakura turned to him the moment they were out of respectable company. "What the hell was that!" she shrieked. Naruto was just glad that she had at least had the decency not to scream at him in public. She had shoved them into an alley the moment she found one.

Naruto shrugged, scoffing his foot on the floor uncomfortably. "What?"

She glared at him. "What do you mean what?" she asked irritably. "I mean what was that!" she said pointing back at the Hokage tower.

He shrugged again. "She doesn't like orange."

She scoffed. "No. That wasn't what I meant and you know it."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Naruto looked at her and just as quickly glanced away. Her angry expression had given way to hurt and he hated it.

"So Tsunade-hime has your trust but I don't? Is that it?"

Even though he wanted to argue, the words wouldn't come. Instead he shook his head, staring resolutely at the ground. Why had Tsunade forced this? He tried to convince himself that he would have told Sakura…eventually.

"Naruto!" Sakura shrieked, her face red with anger and maybe a little bit of embarrassment, clashing horribly with her pink hair.

Straightening his shoulders, he dragged his gaze back to her. It couldn't be so hard. All he had to do was say the words and be done with it. Hell, it could be so easy…and yet, it wasn't. Taking a great gulp of air, Naruto kept reminding himself he was shinobi and shinobi could handle anything, even this. Finally exhaling, "I'm not who you think I am."

"What?" she just looked confused.

"I hate orange, I hate loud noises and I hate having to smile all the time," he said, hoping he would not have to say anymore and that she could draw her own, hopefully accurate, conclusions.

"What?" she repeated.

"I'm not the Naruto you know. I never was."

"So what? You're the secret twin?" she chuckled nervously.

Naruto glared. "Don't be obtuse. I was an only child."

Sakura blushed. "That's not what I meant," she mumbled, properly chastised. "Ok," she said slowly. "What do you mean then? That you've been pretending this whole time."

Naruto fought down the shame that wanted to crawl up his throat. "Yes."

She was silent for a long while. Then she said, "So you mean I don't know you. I've never known you?" Her voice trembled a bit.

Naruto went back to looking down at the floor. He didn't say anything.

"How can you say something like that? What? You're pulling a Sasuke now, is that it? Because, you know what, I thought I knew him too!" Naruto's head snapped up, astonished. Sakura eyes glistened with tears.

"That's not what I… It's not like that!"

Sakura glared at him. "It's exactly like that! You lied to me. You pretended. I'm tired of people pretending. I trusted you! You were my friend!"

Naruto stared back helplessly. "I am your friend, Sakura," he said softly.

She sent him one more glare before she stormed off. This was what he had been afraid would happen. How were people supposed to react when he told them the truth? It wasn't something anybody would expect to hear. He stared at where his best friend used to be. How could this be happening? He leaned against the wall and let his head fall back, taking deep breaths. He had to focus. There had to be a way, any way to convince her he wasn't like Sasuke.

"She'll come around." Naruto whipped his head around, startled, hands automatically going to his weapons. "Easy there," Kakashi said, hands up in the air and an embarrassed grin on his face.

Naruto relaxed slightly. "Sensei…" Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Did you…did you hear?"

"Yes," he said simply.

Naruto waited…and waited…and waited. "Is that it?"

"Yes."

Naruto slumped back against the wall. "Thank you."

"Food?"

Naruto pushed himself up and straightened his clothes, eyeing the orange distastefully. "Yes. Thanks."

"Maybe you shouldn't wear that thing anymore."

"Maybe you shouldn't cover your face."

"Maybe." Kakashi stuffed his hands into his pockets and strolled out of the alleyway towards a restaurant. "You first," he called back.

Naruto smiled and ran to catch up.


End file.
